


The Secret of the Silver Pines Pirate

by burglebezzlement



Category: Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated (TV 2010)
Genre: Canadian Shack, Case Fic, Cats, F/F, Mountains, Pie, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-15 20:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13039095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: When Marcie’s aunt sees a ghost in her pie shop, Marcie asks Velma to come investigate. But solving the mystery behind the pie-stealing ghost may be easier than resolving the differences that lie in Marcie and Velma’s pasts.





	The Secret of the Silver Pines Pirate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ozsaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozsaur/gifts).



> For ozsaur. I was delighted to get a chance to write Marcie and Velma. Happy Yuletide! :D

The snow has just started falling when Velma’s plane lands at Silver Pines Regional Airport.

It’s Velma’s first mystery away from the gang. Her first mystery with just Marcie. Since the Mystery Incorporated gang arrived at Miskatonic University, Marcie has traveled east to join them on a few cases, but it’s not the same. Working with Marcie and the rest of the team is nothing like working with just Marcie that endless summer when they worked for Mr. E, traveling the world.

Velma hugs Marcie, holding her a little too long before letting go. “I just brought a carry-on,” she says, lifting it up where Marcie can see.

Marcie pushes her glasses up. “Sounds good, V. Let’s get going.”

The road up into the mountains is twisty and snowy, and Marcie’s ancient hatchback slides sideways a few times before they meet up with the county grit truck. They follow it into town, keeping a safe distance behind. March is late in the year for snow, but nobody seems to have told the weather that.

Velma lets Marcie concentrate, watching the snowflakes in the light from Marcie’s headlights.

The town looks like something off a picture postcard, with snow drifted across the roofs. The architecture is vaguely Alpine by way of California, steep roofs and logs and whitewashed stucco against the evergreens lining the mountains behind, and the deep, clear twilight blue of the sky.

Marcie pulls into a parking spot behind her aunt’s pie shop, one of the narrow old buildings in the center of town. Marcie’s aunt lives in the same building, in a small apartment above her pie shop. 

“We’ll have to shovel again in the morning.” Marcie sniffs. “Feels like all we do is shovel.”

“I should have asked,” Velma says. “How’s your aunt doing?”

“Getting around.” Marcie swings the car door shut and leads Velma up the back stairs. “She’ll be glad you’re here, though. This one’s a real mystery.”

* * *

“Velma!” Marcie’s aunt Mo has curly silver hair, worn loose to her shoulders, and twinkling dark eyes. She hobbles forward on her crutches to hug Velma. “So good to see you, darling. I hope you had a good flight.”

Velma hugs her back, trying to remember what she found in her email about Mo. 

When Crystal Cove was rebooted, Velma found years of history in the other Velma’s email. Everything she and the other Daphne talked about. All the molecular gastronomy notes she sent Shaggy for his Teen Epicurean contests. The mysteries their alternate selves investigated, the few of those there were.

And everything about Marcie. Based on their emails, they’ve been friends for years longer in this reality than in Velma’s reality. Olympiad of Science partnerships, spending vacations with one another’s families — including Marcie’s Aunt Mo.

In this reality, Velma and Marcie never worked for Mr. E. Never fell down that riverbank in France, chasing a lead on the Planispheric Disc, and landed on top of one another, driving the breath out of Velma while Marcie looked down at her, hair tangled and glasses askew, and then Marcie leaned in and kissed Velma and —

Velma swallows and turns her attention back to Marcie and her aunt. It hurts less if she doesn’t think about it.

“So good to see you girls both again,” Mo is saying. “And such terrible timing! I’m sorry you only get to come out here to help.”

“Marcie said you had a mystery on your hands,” Velma says. She opens her notebook. “Tell me all about it.”

“Oh, no, I can’t put you right to work.” Mo gestures towards the hallway. “Get yourself settled, and then we’ll have dinner. And then we’ll talk.”

* * *

Outside, the wind is howling. Inside, Mo’s apartment is toasty and warm. Marcie has built a cheery fire in Mo’s little coal stove, in the corner, and Velma warms her hands before sitting down at the table, which is set with woven napkins, paper plates, and fancy wine glasses.

“I hope you don’t mind a scratch meal,” Mo says, gesturing down to the cast on her leg. “I’ve had to make some compromises lately.”

“It smells delicious,” Velma says, sincerely, and then jumps up to help Marcie carry things in from the kitchen.

Dinner is a green salad and cheese fondue with sausages and cubes of Mo’s home-baked crusty bread, with sparkling grape juice. “I remember how much you liked fondue night when you and Marcie visited as kids,” she says to Velma. 

Velma feels the uncertainty she always feels when someone refers to something from the new timeline, but she covers. “It’s delicious.”

Mo asks where the rest of the gang is, which suggests that she’s met them before. Velma tells her all about Fred and Daphne’s trip to TrapCon (“Where the real trap is the friends you trap along the way!”). Shaggy and Scooby are doing what they call “hanging Crystal Cove style,” which seems to involve trips to every restaurant in Crystal Cove. Shaggy still hasn’t gotten the hang of cooking the way his alternate self did, but he and Scooby have started a gastro-blog. Velma manages their website. Their traffic is growing steadily — apparently there’s a lot of people with the munchies in the new and improved Crystal Cove.

When dinner is over, Mo hobbles over to the plush couch in the living room, and waves for Velma to follow her. Marcie insists on doing the dishes. Velma tries to help, but Marcie leans over. “Let her tell you, V. She’s not talking to me about it.”

So Velma sits on one of Mo’s armchairs, while Marcie gathers the dishes and starts making noise in the kitchen. Remembering the way Mo looked at her notebook, Velma leaves it in her pocket and snuggles up against the arm of the chair instead. 

She’s startled when a large orange cat jumps up next to her and begins to purr. Based on the other Velma’s emails, this cat is Piewacket, which means Rum Tum Tugger, Mo’s other cat, is around somewhere. 

Velma strokes the soft fur on the cat’s head and lets herself relax.

“So the mystery,” she says. “What happened?”

Aunt Mo meets her eyes. “Did I ever tell you girls about the Pirate of Silver Pines?”

Nothing Velma found in other-Velma’s emails mentioned anything about a pirate. “I’d love to hear it again,” she says. 

“It’s an old story,” Aunt Mo says. She leans forward, her face lit by the shifting firelight from the glass door of the coal stove. “Long, long ago, this town was founded by gold prospectors.”

> They called the town Silver Pines, after the trees they found here, but it was the gold that brought them to this remote mountain range. They had to pack in all their supplies, and they built their buildings with the logs of the silver pines they named it for. It was a rough, out back sort of town, with three saloons and not a church to be seen, but people used to get on, mostly. 
> 
> One of the prospectors was Sneaky Zeke. Old Zeke used to disappear off to his claim, out west of town somewhere — nobody quite knew where, because Zeke was as sneaky as his name.
> 
> Every few weeks, Zeke came into town, pockets loaded down with gold nuggets, and went down to the Wells Fargo depot. He’d send money on to his family, back East, and then spend the rest on the usual pursuits — and on pie. Zeke loved pie. Any time he found a pie cooling on the windowsill, he’d steal it, and leave a golden nugget in its place. Got to the point where the townsfolk would make pie special, any time they heard Zeke was in town, and leave the pies cooling on the windowsill in the hopes of getting their own gold nugget.
> 
> Over the years, the local mines played out, and folks moved on further west to new territory, or up to the Yukon. But Zeke stuck around — he had his claim, and he said he didn’t need anything but hardtack and whiskey and a fresh-baked pie now and then. The people who stayed in town kept supplying him.
> 
> Finally, one long, snowy winter, a bit like this one, Zeke left. Some folks say he disappeared. Some folks say he went back East, to his family. But they all say that to this day, if you leave a fresh-baked pie cooling on your windowsill, it just might vanish — and you might find a shiny gold nugget in its place.

“It’s a great story,” Velma says, once Mo sits back. “But where’s the pirate?”

Marcie clears her throat from the doorway. “It’s a pun. Pirate, pie-rate, get it? Because he stole pie.”

“Right.” Velma nods and hopes she wasn’t supposed to already know that. “But how does that relate to how you broke your ankle?”

Mo looks away from Velma. In the firelight, her face looks drawn. “One night, I was working late down in the pie shop. We’ve been busy lately.”

“She’s being modest,” Marcie says. “Aunt Mo’s bakery bakes pies for most of the Pi Day celebrations in Silver Pines Valley.”

“It’s been busy,” Mo agrees. “Maybe I’m just working too much.” Her hands worry at the fringe of her afghan. “I would swear I saw him — the ghost of Sneaky Zeke, the pie pirate. He wore old-timey clothes, like a prospector, and he was covered in dirt from the mines. But before I could touch him, I tripped over the floor mat and broke my ankle.”

Marcie sits down on the arm of the couch. “Me and V can help you bake the pies,” she says. “It’s probably someone in town playing a trick on you. There’s no such thing as pirate ghosts.”

“He was there,” Mo insists. “It was Sneaky Zeke.” She reaches into the drawer in the tiny table beside the couch and pulls something out. “He left this behind.”

In her hand is a tiny nugget of pure gold.

* * *

The guest room has two twin beds, made up with old patchwork quilts that don’t match. The wind blows along the eaves of the old building, and Velma snuggles down under her quilt and watches while Marcie gathers up her pajamas and her toiletry kit. 

“I thought you were bringing the gang,” Marcie says.

Velma adjusts her glasses. “I can call them,” she says. Even though she doesn’t want to. Even though she wants it to be just her and Marcie, here in the snowy mountains with a pirate ghost.

“No,” Marcie says. “It’s fine.” She looks away for a moment. “It’s good to see just you for a change. I’ve missed you, V.”

Before Velma can say anything, Marcie’s left the room.

* * *

The next morning dawns clear and cold. Marcie dishes them up bowls of slow-cooker cracked oats, covered in heavy cream and brown sugar. “If we wait, Mo will insist on cooking eggs and bacon,” she says. “I want to get baking.”

“I can help,” Velma says.

“Nah.” Marcie pours her a cup of strong, nutty coffee and leans back. “Let me get Aunt Mo settled, and then I can get started on her backlog of Pi Day orders. She’s got the cafe side of the bakery closed down while she recovers, but she still wants to fulfill the orders people already placed.”

Velma pours some of the heavy cream into her coffee and takes a sip. “As long as you’re sure you don’t need help, I can head down to Town Hall,” she says. “Get started on pirate research.”

Marcie smiles. “As soon as we finish shoveling.”

* * *

Silver Pines Town Hall is warm and steamy, and Velma’s glasses fog up for a moment when she steps inside. After wandering the halls, she determines that the records she wants are in the Historical Room, which opens at nine.

At nine on the dot, an elderly woman with a stoop and carefully set hair swings open the door and blinks up at Velma. “Hello, dear,” she says. “Can I help you?”

“Maybe.” Velma follows her into the room, explaining that she’s looking into a local legend about a pie thief.

“You must be staying with that nice Mo Fleach and her niece,” the woman says. “Such a nice girl, that Marcie.”

Velma nods. “I am. How did you know?”

“Small towns, dear.” The woman pats her arm and then slowly ambles across the room, tidying piles of ancient paperwork as she goes. “We hear everything… I’m Miss Pennypacker, the town archivist. Now where were those books?”

* * *

It takes Velma hours to politely listen to all of Miss Pennypacker’s unhelpful suggestions and finally get access to what she needs: the old claim forms in the archive’s vault. When she does, she finds something: records of the original claim made by a Zekeriah Rogers. She wonders if Zekeriah was a relative of Shaggy’s. Someone so hungry for pie, he left gold nuggets behind to pay for it? Seems likely.

She photographs the claim forms with her phone and helps Miss Pennypacker shelve the rest of the books before heading back. 

The snow is deep in the town square, but Town Hall has a market set up inside, with vendors selling baked goods and vegetables and preserves. It’s already past lunchtime, and Velma impulsively buys a pound of butter from grass-fed cows, a loaf of crusty wholegrain bread, and a bottle of manzanita honey to bring back with her. She’s halfway through town when she remembers that she doesn’t know if this alternate Marcie even likes honey butter sandwiches.

In the old timeline, they were Marcie’s favorite stakeout food. Velma’s had honey butter sandwiches made with honeys from local bees all over the world. She used to complain about them, but they made Marcie so happy she never complained much. 

The pie shop’s small seating area is dark, but the kitchen is filled with delicious smells. Marcie’s sliding trays of hand pies into one of the industrial ovens when Velma comes in.

“Great timing, V.” Marcie pushes her glasses up. “I just put the last morning batch in.”

“I brought honey-butter sandwich fixings,” Velma says, swinging her bag up onto the table. “Does your aunt have a toaster?”

“Honey-butter?” Marcie wrinkles her nose. “Sounds weird.”

Velma bites her lip. “I thought —”

“I’m up for trying them,” Marcie says. “I should check on Mo anyway. Come on.”

Velma follows her up the stairs to Mo’s apartment. Mo is on the couch, petting her cats and looking out the window at the snow-covered mountains.

“Girls!” She looks up. “I hope you’re not working too hard. You should have fun while you’re here, too.”

Marcie leans down and hugs her aunt while Velma heads into the kitchen and pulls out Mo’s toaster. She cuts thick slices of bread and toasts them before spreading them with the butter and drizzling them with honey.

“This is delicious,” Marcie says, once she’s bitten into her sandwich. “I have to hand it to you, V.”

Velma thinks of all the honey-butter sandwiches they shared in the old timeline, and smiles. “Glad you like it.”

After lunch, Velma clears away the dishes and spreads out her research notes from the morning on the table, so Marcie and Mo can see. “Time to get to work,” she says. “I’m thinking about your pirate ghost.”

There’s a photocopy of a tintype photograph of Zekeriah Rogers, who does look a little like an old-timey version of Shaggy, if Shaggy had a really long beard. “This is your prospector.”

Mo pulls the photograph closer and studies it. “This isn’t the pirate I saw. Too tall. And he’s dressed like a prospector, not a pirate.”

“That’s because the pirate you saw wasn’t a real ghost,” Velma says. “I think someone’s been sneaking into your bakery. We’re going to find out who.”

* * *

After lunch, the investigation takes a back seat to Marcie’s list of the remaining Pi Day pies. Velma appoints herself the berry-washer and apple peeler, while Marcie puts together pie crust and cuts and rolls and shapes like it’s nothing. 

“I didn’t know you baked like this,” Velma says, while Marcie cuts vents into a fruit pie. 

Marcie grins. “Cooking’s just chemistry with tastier ingredients.”

“I’ve got some plans for figuring out where this ghost is coming from,” Velma says. She spears an apple on the automatic apple peeler and hits the button to whiz off the apple’s skin. The apple slices fall into the bowl, neat and clean, and Velma removes the core and spears another apple. “Does your aunt have any bath salts?”

“Why?”

“I need something that’ll glow under a blacklight.” Velma loads another apple. “This peeler-chopper is amazing.”

“It should be. I invented it.” 

Velma bites her lip, wondering if she was supposed to remember that. There’s so much she doesn’t know about this timeline.

“I thought about selling it,” Marcie says. “Small market.”

“It’s pretty awesome.” Velma puts in the last apple and admires the machine as it peels, cores, and slices. “What’s next?”

“Cream pies,” Marcie says, pulling down another set of recipe cards. Mo’s recipes are on laminated oaktag, organized by category on a set of linked rings. “Are you sure we’re looking at someone who’s still breaking in? There haven’t been any missing pies.”

“Only one way to find out,” Velma says.

* * *

Before they head out for dinner, Velma uses a sifter to gently dust fine bath salt across the floor of the kitchen and bakery, using care to keep it from landing on any of the pies.

“It doesn’t look like a trap,” Marcie says skeptically. “I can’t even see the powder.”

“Exactly.” Velma grins. “Come on.”

They’re carrying a stack of pies each — banana cream and raspberry-brambleberry and chocolate silk and grasshopper and apple. The delivery guy will come tomorrow to pick up all the pies being delivered for Pi Day, but Velma’s aunt asked them to make a special evening delivery to the town diner, the Silver Streak.

“Anne says she’s out of pie,” Mo says. “You girls go get dinner. On me. Just bring me back the meatloaf special.”

“Isn’t the meatloaf always on special?” Marcie asks, wrapping her scarf around her neck. 

Mo smiles at her. “It’s always good, isn’t it? Now git, you two.”

The diner is a block or two from Mo’s pie shop, and they decide to walk there. It’s cold outside, the air filled with the smell of snow and pine trees. Velma huddles into her turtleneck, letting Marcie lead her down the icy sidewalks to the Silver Streak Diner.

The diner’s got the front of a classic pre-fab American diner, silver chrome gleaming under the streetlights. Inside, it’s warm. There’s more seating than Velma expected, and when she looks up, she sees the join where the chrome front of the old diner has been knit onto the building behind. 

“Special pie delivery!” Marcie sets her pies down on the chipped Formica counter.

A woman with red hair spilling out of a messy bun looks up from the grill. “Marcie? That is you! Bless you, we were nearly out of pie, and you know how this crowd riots when they don’t get their pie.”

Velma looks around. Nobody in the diner looks like they’re planning a riot. There’s a few older guys nursing coffee at the counter, a young couple sharing a milkshake, and a middle-aged guy sitting at a booth by himself, feeding a piece of iceberg lettuce to what appears to be an angora rabbit.

“Is that a rabbit?” she whispers to Marcie.

“Don’t ask,” Marcie says, but Anne heard them.

“Just Clive and his bunny,” Anne says. “Such a romantic story… Clive’s girlfriend, Bunny, is in prison out of state — falsely accused. Such a sad case.” Anne shakes her head. “Fortunately, Bunny’s able to psychically link to their pet rabbit so she can spend time with Clive.”

“Really.” Velma looks at Marcie, who has an “I told you so” expression on her face. 

“The rabbit’s name is also Bunny,” Marcie says dryly.

Anne starts unboxing pies and loading them into the diner’s pie case. When the pie case door shuts, the light goes on, and the pies start revolving slowly. 

“There,” Anne says, with obvious satisfaction. “Thanks again, Marcie — you’re a life-saver. And who’s your friend?”

“You remember Velma,” Marcie says, before Velma can introduce herself. “She’s one of my friends from Crystal Cove. She’s helping out while Aunt Mo recovers.”

“How is your aunt doing?” Anne turns back to the grill, but she doesn’t stop talking. “I worry about her, I do — all alone in that great big pie shop of hers.”

“She’s mending. She says Piewacket and Rum Tum Tugger are all the company she needs.” Marcie motions Velma over to one of the booths, shedding her overcoat as she goes. “What’s on special tonight, Anne?”

“The meatloaf,” Anne says, immediately. 

“The meatloaf’s always on special,” Marcie says. “V?”

“Spaghetti.” Velma closes her menu. “With the side salad, please.”

Marcie orders the chicken carbonara and an order of garlic bread for them to share. They sit in companionable silence. Velma tries to balance the old-fashioned salt shaker on edge on a few grains of salt, and Marcie smiles when she finally gets it. It feels like the time they used to spend together in the old timeline, hanging out, talking about science and engineering and other interests they shared. Not talking about the serious stuff, because the serious stuff was about to eat them alive. 

“So you think there’s still someone breaking into the pie shop?” Marcie asks.

“Maybe.” Velma unwraps her straw. “Only way to be sure is to check.”

“There haven’t been any pies missing,” Marcie says. “And it’s been snowing, so Aunt Mo would have seen footprints if anyone were breaking in.” She meets Velma’s eyes. “Maybe it is a ghost.”

Velma screws up her nose at Marcie, and Marcie laughs. “I know,” she says. “Velma Dinkley’s Rule #1: It’s never supernatural.”

Velma looks down. Her rule has been wrong before. “Or he’s after the recipes,” she says, to change the topic.

Once they’re done eating, they ask Anne for Mo’s meatloaf special to go. It’s colder outside, and Velma pushes her hands into her pockets.

They’re almost back at Mo’s pie shop when Marcie stops.

“You helped me invent that apple peeler,” she says, like it’s something she can’t hold back any longer.

Velma doesn’t know what to say. “I did?”

“You did.” Marcie looks away. “I was having trouble with the blade arrangement, and you looked at my mechanism for a minute or two and then came up with this amazing idea for a wire cutter— you were so proud of it.”

Velma’s frozen, uncertain, worried, her stomach in knots.

“You wouldn’t have forgotten that,” Marcie says, fiercely, and looks into Velma’s face. Her eyes are deep purple in the light from the streetlight. “What happened, V? Where did you go? Why did you and all your Mystery Incorporated friends just take off like that? I thought it was because — because of what I said, but if you don’t remember the apple peeler —”

“Marcie —”

“Piewacket knew you,” Marcie says. “I know you’re Velma, because Piewacket remembered you. He’s really skittish. He wouldn’t have jumped up in your lap like that if you weren’t really Velma.” She starts walking again. “But you don’t remember the apple peeler, and if there’s anything you’d remember, it’s being smart. You’ve always been so smart, V.”

Velma stands in the cold, watching as Marcie hurries up the stairs of Mo’s pie shop. She knows she should run after her. She has to tell Marcie the truth, tell her everything, about Mr. E and the Evil Entity and the other Crystal Cove — she’s known she had to for a long time now, but it was easier to run away to Miskatonic University with the gang. Simpler.

She’s going to take the hard road now. Just as soon as she figures out how you tell someone they sacrificed their life for you.

* * *

When Velma gets inside, Marcie’s already asleep, or pretending to be. Velma quietly takes her toiletries and pajamas from her bag and gets ready for bed, brushing her teeth and trying to avoid looking at herself in the mirror. 

Piewacket winds around her ankles when she gets out of the bathroom. She picks him up, the cat’s weight comforting against her chest. He starts purring when she scratches his head.

 _This world is realer than the one I remember_ , Velma thinks. She and the rest of the Mystery Incorporated gang are the only ones who remember their timeline. Everyone else remembers the new one. The objectively better one.

“Even a cat remembers,” she says, letting Piewacket brush his cheek against her chin. She sighs into his fur, and then lets him jump down from her arms. 

In the guest bedroom, Marcie’s tossing and turning in the other bed. Velma can’t quite hear what she’s muttering. She watches, wondering if she should wake the other girl up, but Marcie stills.

* * *

The next morning dawns, clear and cold, the sunlight sparkling off the snow on the mountains.

The floor of the bakery looks undisturbed until Velma switches on her blacklight, revealing footsteps in the powdered surface. They lead from the basement stairs over to the pie cooling area, and back again.

“Looks like your aunt’s ghost isn’t so ghostly after all.” Velma heads over to the pie area, careful not to disturb the footprints. They’re indistinct markings, the tread so faint she can’t measure them or capture enough detail to run a reverse-search to find the shoe the made them.

Marcie picks up the notepad she’s been using to organize all of her aunt’s Pi Day pie orders. “I don’t see any pies missing,” she says, after a moment of scanning. 

Velma studies the pies. The footprints only go towards one area: the double-crusted fruit pies.

“So if they’re not stealing recipes, tampering with pies, or stealing pies, what’s left?” Marcie pushes her hair back in frustration. “I don’t get it, V.”

Velma starts lifting the fruit pies to look underneath. One of them is unexpectedly heavy — much heavier than the pies they carried to the diner the night before. Suspiciously heavy.

She pulls out her regular flashlight and shines it in the air vents cut into the top crust of the pie. Just as she suspected — there’s something in there. Something that gleams.

“Mind if I tear this pie apart?” Velma asks.

“Be my guest.” Marcie slides a work bowl over. “Just don’t get anything on the other pies. I can’t handle baking this many again, and we’d miss the Pi Day deliveries.”

Velma dumps the pie out into the bowl and starts poking at it, her hands sticky with the oozing filling. “What kind of pie is this?”

“Golden raisin.” Marcie wrinkles her nose. “Special order. Nobody else wants one.”

“A very special order,” Velma says. “Look!”

The gold nuggets Velma finds in the pie’s interior are irregular, knobby, but the gleam of the gold matches the nugget Mo found on the floor after her accident. They’re just small enough to fit through the vents cut into the pie’s top crust and sink down into the filling, leaving no sign of tampering — as long as nobody noticed the weight of the pie. 

“I think someone’s using your aunt’s pies to smuggle gold,” Velma says. “Where was this pie going?”

Marcie heads over to Mo’s tiny office area, where the bakery computer lives. Mo uses an integrated website and ordering system, which means Velma has to do a little digging to access the orders. The pie in question was a special order, one of Mo’s rare mail-order pies. Velma digs in and finds the delivery address.

“Dead end,” she says. “It’s a PO Box in Tempe, Arizona. And the email’s a dead end, too. Just a string of numbers. Must be a throwaway account.”

Velma briefly considers asking Fred and Daphne to drive down to Arizona and stake out the PO Box, but shakes her head. It’d take too long, and there’s no guarantee they’d be able to find the pie smuggler’s accomplice. 

“Let me check the payment method.” Velma taps a few more keys. “No good. Bitcoin. So much for following the money.” She shakes her head. “Why does your aunt’s pie shop even accept payment in BItcoin?”

“She’s taking pie into the twenty-first century,” Marcie says dryly. 

“We still have the basement,” Velma says. “Want to try that next?”

Marcie glances at the clock. “I’ve got Shawn showing up in a few minutes to pick up our deliveries,” she says. “You think we can send the other pies out into the world?”

“I think so,” Velma says. “We should check first, though.” 

While Marcie hefts the remaining pies, looking for anything suspiciously heavy, Velma scans through Mo’s ordering system. There’s no other mail-ordered pies going to PO boxes. Velma does see a couple of pies being shipped to the Bronson-Nettles residence out in Crystal Cove, which makes her smile. The secret of Mayor Nettles’ prize-winning rhubarb-raspberry pies is safe with her.

* * *

Shawn, the delivery guy, shows up a few minutes late. Marcie’s fatalistic shrug suggests that this is usually the case. He’s a tall guy, scruffy beard, who looks like he runs deliveries between snowboarding runs. Marcie and Velma have the pies boxed and ready, so they help him stack them into the storage in his van.

Shawn squints down into the destroyed raisin pie before he leaves. “What happened here?”

Velma checks her pocket. She still has the gold. “Quality control,” she says, and wonders. Shawn has the perfect opportunity to steal the golden raisin pie before it even makes it to the Post Office. But why would a delivery guy need to use pies to smuggle? He’s got a truck, and he’s got a reason to be in Mo’s pie shop. He already has the perfect cover.

Marcie sends Shawn off with a box of hand pies (“Experimental filling,” she tells him, and Shawn raises one eyebrow, suggesting that some of Mo and Marcie’s past experiments have been interesting ones).

“Basement time,” Marcie says, once Shawn is gone. Velma grins.

The basement of the pie shop is where Mo stores her dry goods. It’s clean and organized, the brick and fieldstone foundation walls neatly painted.

It’s so clean, Velma can’t see where the pie smuggler is getting in. The basement walls shared with the buildings on either side are the obvious places to start, but there’s no sign of a door anywhere. Turning on the blacklight doesn’t show anything, either — the layer of dust Velma used was too fine for the smuggler to have tracked anything beyond the basement stairs. 

“Let’s start tapping,” Velma says.

She and Marcie start poking and prying at the walls. Velma even pulls up the corners of the vinyl flooring Mo has laid down over basement’s concrete floor, but there’s no sign anyone ever came in that way.

“I don’t see anything, V.” Marcie shakes her head. “It’s like the ghost got down to the basement and vanished.”

“I refuse to believe that a ghost is smuggling gold to Tempe, Arizona.” Velma pushes her glasses up her nose. “Come on. Where does your aunt keep her matches?”

Mo’s matches are long tapers, perfect for lighting her coal stove — and for finding hidden passageways. Velma lights the first one and starts walking along the edges of the basement walls, trying to keep the flame as still as she can. 

She’s at the front of the basement, the fieldstone wall that fronts the roadway, when the match flickers. Velma holds her breath, and moves it a little forward, a little back —

 _There._ The flame moves again. There’s air moving in this corner of the basement, and if Velma’s right, it leads to the passageway the pie smuggler is using to haunt Mo’s shop. 

Once they know where the passageway is, it’s easy. Marcie finds the stone that operates the hidden doorway. It’s down at the base of the wall — a small stone with a slightly brighter coat of paint than the rest. When Marcie depresses it, a section of the wall swings silently into the basement, revealing a dark earthen passageway beyond.

* * *

Velma’s the one who suggests calling the police.

“They won’t believe us, V.” Marcie digs into the guest room closet and pulls out an oxygen meter. “Ah! Perfect. I knew I left this here.”

“We have the gold,” Velma says. They gave it to Mo, when they explained everything they’d figured out so far. Mo had looked relieved, and then worried. “We can show them the gold.”

“And then what? They’re going to block off the passage we found, and there’ll be a ton of police cars here with flashing lights. They’ll scare the fake ghost away, and then we’ll never figure out who it was. And Aunt Mo needs to know who it was, for her peace of mind.”

“I guess.” Velma does another check of their spare flashlight batteries. It’s enough batteries. They’re not going to be plunged into darkness down there.

So why doesn’t it feel like enough?

“What’s wrong?” Marcie stops her rummage through the closet, sitting back on her heels. “You love jumping in mysterious holes, V. Always have. Is everything okay?”

_Untold tons of rock above them, struggling down the path while hiding from the Kriegstaffebots, their parents saved but the world still in peril, trying not to let the cavern walls close in on them, and then Marcie —_

“I’m fine.” Velma doesn’t meet Marcie’s eyes. “Will it be safe, leaving Mo alone here?”

“It’s Anne’s day off from the diner,” Marcie says. “She’s going to come sit with her while we figure out where the pie smuggler’s coming from.”

Velma chooses her words carefully. “Are you sure Anne —”

“Whoever the pie smuggler is, it’s not Anne,” Marcie says. “She’s been Mo’s friend for years.”

Velma thinks about all the old friends they knew in the old timeline, the ones who betrayed one another like it was nothing. Maybe the old timeline has left Velma unreasonably suspicious. “Are you sure?”

“Come on, V.” Marcie pulls herself out of the closet, two headlamps in her hands. “I promise.”

Velma takes a deep breath and picks up the oxygen meter. “Okay.”

Outside the window, a few flakes of snow start falling.

* * *

They don’t leave any traps set in the basement behind them. There’s some part of Velma that wants to, but it’s always best to leave your escape route untrapped. She’s been swept up in enough of Fred’s nets while fleeing to learn that lesson.

The walls of the passageway are rough, so covered in dirt and efflorescence that it’s hard to see the outlines of the bricks the passage seems to have been built of. Velma lets her hands brush the wall as they walk. It’s reassuring. It’s not rough-hewn rock or natural cavern, like the caverns under Crystal Cove.

She wonders, sometimes, if the caverns are still there. In this reality, Crystal Cove looks the same, but the cataclysmic earthquake that destroyed the old mission didn’t happen. Did the caves collapse? Or did they never exist?

Marcie pauses for a moment. “Looks like the passage branches ahead.” She takes chalk from her bag and marks an arrow on a dry part of the brick wall, pointing back towards Mo’s. “Which route, V?”

Velma studies the two options. They look the same, but when she crouches down and shines a flashlight across the floor at an angle, she can just make out faint boot prints in the passageway leading to the right.

“Right,” she says. The boot prints could also be from city maintenance men, or teenagers exploring, or a hundred other things. But the passageway doesn’t look like it’s being maintained, and she doesn’t see the soda cans and candy wrappers you usually find in unofficial teen hangouts.

The passage narrows and starts running uphill. Velma thinks of the maps she studied of the town, and decides that they’re probably outside town limits by now. In places, parts of the wall have bulged inwards, spilling bricks and dirt into their path.

Marcie keeps going, and Velma follows, trying not to feel the weight of the mountains above her, the dirt closing in around her —

“Hey.” Marcie stops and faces her. “You okay, V?”

“I’m —” Velma closes her eyes. It doesn’t help. “I don’t like being underground.” She takes a deep breath and opens her eyes again. “I know I used to, but — look, Marcie, I need to tell you —”

“Hang on.” Marcie puts her hand against the wall of the cavern, her eyes narrowed in concentration. “Do you feel —”

There’s a great rush of air from behind them, filled with dust and dirt from years of abandonment, the smell of rot and decay, and Velma tries not to scream. She finds Marcie’s hand instinctively, gripping it tightly. Marcie squeezes back.

The noise feels like it takes forever to fade away. Marcie’s face is pale in the light from Velma’s headlamp. “I think that was a cave-in,” she says. Velma’s imagination is ahead of her, painting vivid pictures of a collapsed passage, blocking the in the darkness forever as their batteries run out and they drink cave-water.

Velma takes a deep breath, and then coughs on the dust. “We should keep moving,” she says, thinking of the boot prints. “Whoever’s pretending to be the ghost came through here.” She hopes. “They must have another exit.”

Marcie smiles wanly. “Onward, then.”

They drop hands and start walking, feet uncertain on the dusty floor. The passage grows narrower, and the brick gives way to rough-cut timbers holding up bare rock as they climb through what feels like an endless tunnel. Velma tries not to think of Professor Pericles and his mine shafts. 

“I think we’re getting closer,” Marcie says, as they skirt a pool of water. “The air feels fresher.”

They come to another tunnel collapse, and Velma’s heart pounds until Marcie realizes that there’s a way around, on the other side of a pile of irregular stones. 

“Someone made this recently,” Marcie says, looking at the fresh cuts on a new piece of support timber that’s been added to hold back part of the collapsed tunnel. “This wood is pressure-treated.”

“So we are going in the right direction.” It’s something.

Velma’s squinting into the distance, trying to see if there’s light, when Marcie stumbles over a rock and goes down into a dark pool of water.

“Marcie!” Velma lunges forward and grabs Marcie’s wrists, holding on tight, visions of rushing underground waterfalls and drainage outfalls in her mind. “Marcie, hold on!”

“I’m fine,” Marcie says. She sits up in the stream and tries to blow her wet bangs out of her face. “See? Just a stream.”

Velma helps Marcie up, and tries not to let her worry show on her face. Marcie’s fine now, but her clothes are soaked, and the cave temperature has grown cooler. 

“Let’s keep going,” Velma says.

Marcie’s headlamp shorts out a minute later, leaving them with only the light from Velma’s headlamp as they walk on, looking into the darkness for a hint of light.

Finally, the walls of the passage begin to widen again, and they’re walking on firmer ground. There’s a glimmer of daylight ahead.

“There!” Marcie points. “See that?”

Velma reaches out for Marcie’s hand before she remembers. “Let’s see where this comes out.”

The mouth of the passageway opens into the side of a valley. The wind’s come up, and the snow’s steadier than it was when they went into the cave, flakes whipping past them as they squint.

“I think that’s town,” Velma shouts, pointing to the lights in the distance. They came further than she’d realized.

Marcie shivers beside her, and Velma realizes that while they prepared for low oxygen and darkness, they didn’t pack anything for the cold. They have their boots and their jackets, and that’s it — and Marcie’s still soaking wet, her damp clothes wicking heat away.

Velma pulls Marcie back into the mouth of the cave. “Stay here.” She crouches down and digs through her pack until she finds the space blanket she keeps in there, just in case. She’s never needed to use it before. She tears open the packaging and wraps the thin Mylar around Marcie. “I’ll see if I can find shelter.”

“We can call for help.” Marcie pulls out her cell phone and squints at the screen. “Well, you can. My phone’s dead.”

Velma pulls out her own phone. The screen wakes when she touches it, but she has no reception. “I’m sure it’s just the walls of the tunnel,” she says, keeping her voice light for Marcie’s benefit. She swallows down on her worry. “I’m going to find some shelter,” she says. “Should be able to get cell reception a little further out. You stay here, okay? Stay warm.”

Marcie nods. 

Outside the tunnel, the wind whips through Velma’s sweater and heavy tights like they’re nothing. She pulls her turtleneck up over her ears and mouth and squints into the snow. 

There’s a peak on her right, just barely visible against the low sun. Velma thinks she recognizes the shape — it’s distinctive, like a churro standing upright in a dish of lumpy scoops of ice cream. The locals call it Pick Peak. If she’s right, and town’s over there —

“We must be over by Sneaky Zeke’s old claim,” she mutters to herself. She glances down at her cell phone — still no bars — and then puts it in her skirt pocket.

When Velma and Marcie don’t come back, Mo and Anne will call for help. But they’ll point the rescuers to the tunnel in Mo’s basement, and when they find the cave-in, they won’t know that Marcie and Velma made it past. They won’t know to look at the end of the tunnel.

Velma pushes down the thought of Mo’s worried face and keeps moving, snow crunching under her boots. If she’s right, Sneaky Zeke’s old claim shack should be just ahead.

She sees it, finally, in the distance, a low cabin in the darkness with a chimney. It’s not much, but it has four walls. With the snow drifting up against the walls, it’ll be warmer than the cave where she left Marcie. It has to be.

The walk back to Marcie at the cave seems endless. When Velma gets there, Marcie’s huddled in the blanket. She has the battery out of her cell phone, and she’s put the cell phone itself into a plastic bag of dry cereal they brought for emergency rations.

“Smart.” Velma smiles. It’s so Marcie — stuck here in wet clothing, rescue uncertain, she’s still coming up with ways to make things better. The dry cereal will work like rice, drawing the moisture out of Marcie’s phone until it’s safe to turn it on again.

“Thanks.” Marcie’s mouth quirks up. “Is rescue on the way?”

“Not so much.” Velma helps Marcie up. “New plan. I think I found Sneaky Zeke’s old claim shack. If we can make it there, we can shelter for the night. Maybe get a fire going. But we have to go now — the sun’s going down, and if we don’t make it there before the snow gets worse —” She stops talking. She’s not going to think about that. 

“Sounds like a plan.” Marcie repacks her pack and wraps the space blanket around herself. “Let’s go.”

The walk back to the cabin seems endless, snow whipping around them, Marcie’s blanket trying to blow away with the wind. Velma’s footprints are lost in the blowing and drifting snow, and her glasses fog up. She finds the cabin again, but only by keeping Pick Peak on their right as they stumble up the snow-covered slope.

The cabin is built from rough silver pine logs, stacked horizontally, with a fieldstone chimney at one end. They stumble in through the door, which is unlocked, and Velma pushes Marcie towards an old chair in the corner.

When Velma gets the door shut, the wind’s bite is broken, but the cabin is still stone-cold. _Fire first_ , Velma thinks. 

“The matches were in my pack,” Marcie says. “The pack that went in the stream. Good planning, right?”

Velma looks over from the abandoned cabinets, where she’s finding nothing, not even mouse droppings. “You probably know eight ways to make a fire without matches,” she says, fondly.

“Fifteen ways.” Marcie pushes her glasses up her nose. “But five of those require the sun.” She points to the windows. Dirty as they are, they can still see the drifting snow as it blows past the window. Not enough light, even if they had a magnifying glass. “Let me think. You see anything for tinder?”

Velma finds an old chest, with a moth-eaten blanket and a rough pile of straw that might have been a nest for something — a chipmunk or mouse, maybe. She finds an old metal bucket, too, and brings it over to Marcie with the blanket and the straw.

“Might help.” She puts the wool blanket around Marcie’s shoulders and looks at her hopefully. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Marcie says, but Velma can see she’s shivering. “You think the chimney will draw?”

Velma turns her headlamp on to inspect the stove. It’s an ancient, Victorian cookstove model, with an oven. It looks sound. They’ve got more chairs they can tear apart for wood, and there’s an old bedstead in the corner that they might be able to sleep on, if they get the place warmed up enough. 

Marcie’s got her headlamp apart. While Velma breaks up the worst of the chairs for firewood, Marcie uses a wire from the headlamp to short her cell phone battery out and make a spark, lighting the straw on fire. The flame throws a weak light on her face. 

“We’re in business,” Marcie says. “Method Eleven always comes through in a pinch.”

Velma is the one to get the fire going in the stove — carefully, so carefully, hardly breathing because she doesn’t know if the fire will stay lit.

When the fire’s finally caught, she shuts the door and checks the draft. Burning down the cabin might bring attention from town — maybe — but it’d mean no shelter.

Finally, the air in the cabin starts to warm up, and Velma starts to relax a little. She’s still worried about Mo, who must be frantic, but they’ve got shelter, they’ve got warmth — they can make it to the morning, as long as Velma can get Marcie warmed up again.

Marcie’s still shivering, and Velma pulls her towards the fire.

Marcie puts a hand on Velma’s hand. “In the cave. Before the collapse. You said there was something you had to tell me.”

Velma stills, and then switches off her headlamp. With the sun nearly set, the inside of the cabin is plunged into gloom. 

She did say that. She knows she needs to tell Marcie everything. There’s a part of her that’s terrified. That thinks Marcie will think she’s crazy. Or worse — resent her for taking her Velma’s place. For being from a messed-up timeline, instead of this timeline, the happy timeline, where Marcie’s father is a research scientist at CreationEx and her mother never left, and she spends vacations with her loving aunt in the mountains, and she and Velma always win the Tri-State Olympiad of Science. Together. 

Velma stares at the flames dancing inside the stove’s grate, trying to find the words to explain.

“I asked you on a date.” Marcie’s teeth chatter as she says it. “Before you — before you all left. I thought you didn’t feel the same way and you just didn’t want to deal with it, and I didn’t want to drive you away, V, but then you came here and you looked at me like —”

Velma’s heart is pounding. She tucks the moth-eaten wool blanket tighter around Marcie’s shoulders and turns to put another piece of broken chair on the fire. “Like what?”

“Like you care.” Marcie’s voice is small. “I missed you, V. I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too,” Velma says. Her heart might be breaking.

“I never wanted to drive you away.” Marcie’s shivering. “And you seemed excited when I asked you out — you said yes, anyway — but then a day or two later you started talking about Schrödinger’s Cat and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, and then you took off with your old mystery solving club. What happened, V? Why couldn’t you just say you didn’t feel that way about me?”

Velma’s mind races, putting it all together. They must have rebooted the timeline just after Marcie asked her on the date. Marcie must have thought — 

“I did feel that way,” Velma says. “I do feel that way.” Because she does. Because if there’s one thing Velma Dinkley knows, it’s that there’s no version of her that could not be in love with Marcie. 

She leans forward and kisses Marcie, gently at first, Marcie’s lips cold against hers, and then leans in further, hand brushing against Marcie’s cheek and brushing her hair back from her face.

Marcie’s the one to pull back. “What the hell is going on, V?”

“I’m sorry.” Velma pushes herself back from the chair. “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have explained first.”

She drops to the floor, her back to the warmth of the fire, and pulls her knees up to her chest. “You’re going to think I’m crazy,” she says. “You’re going to want to run out that door and get away from me.”

“I won’t.” Marcie leans forward in the chair. “Give me a little credit, V.”

Velma shakes her head, but she can’t put it off any longer. “You remember how I was talking about the many-worlds interpretation?”

Marcie pushes her glasses up. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Everything.” Velma lowers her head to her knees. “Me and you — we’re not from the same universe, Marcie. I know it sounds crazy. Mystery Incorporated — me, Fred, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby? We’re from another universe. We changed something, and it created a new timeline, but we ended up here. We took the places of the versions of ourselves we used to be in this universe.” 

Velma closes her eyes. “I took your Velma’s place,” she says. “I’m not her.”

She waits, listening to the wind sighing over the cabin’s walls and the crackle of the fire in the stove. She’s terrified. Relieved. Afraid.

Finally, she opens her eyes and looks up at Marcie. Marcie’s looking back at her.

“You always said anything paranormal was bullshit,” Marcie says.

Velma shakes her head. “Yeah. I was like that in my original timeline, too. But this — it’s not bullshit, Marcie. It’s science, just… science we don’t understand yet.” She stops before she gets to the Anunnaki or Nibiru, because Marcie really will think she’s nuts it she starts getting into that. “I promise, I’m not lying.”

“I know you’re not.” Marcie leans forward. “You’re the most rational person I know, V. If you believe in this, I believe in you.”

“Really?” A wave of relief washes through Velma, leaving her unsteady.

“It does explain why you don’t remember anything.” Marcie looks at the fire. “And some other things. Like why Fred Jones started calling me Hot Dog Water.”

Velma scrunches her nose. “Sorry about that. It was your nickname in the other timeline — not that I ever used it, and I asked Fred not to, but… well. He’s Fred.”

Marcie looks at Velma. “What were we to one another, in that time line? Were we —” She waves her hands. “Were we friends? Did we know one another?”

Velma lets her legs fall into a cross-legged position. “We were enemies for a long time,” she admits. “You were one of the monsters we exposed, actually.”

“Monsters? What does that —”

“Crystal Cove had a lot of fake monsters,” Velma says. “I can’t explain it. It was a thing. Your dad had an amusement park. Creepy Spooky Terror Land. You created a fake manticore costume with super-helium. But then we caught you, and then Mr. E decided to recruit you, and then we ended up working together.”

She looks up at Marcie. “We fell in love,” she says. “I know it might not have been like that here, but in our world — we were traveling together and solving mysteries together, and we fell in love.”

Marcie smiles down at her. “It was a little bit like that here, too.” She tilts her head to one side. “Except with science instead of mysteries, maybe.”

Velma’s heart feels like it’s finally beating, like Marcie woke her up, like this is too good to be real. “I missed you,” she says, fiercely.

“Not as much as I missed you.”

Velma raises her hand to take Marcie’s, their fingers tangling together in the firelight, Marcie’s skin soft against her own. Marcie’s stopped shivering.

Marcie squeezes Velma’s hand tighter. “You wouldn’t know anything about killer German robots, would you?”

“The Kriegstaffebots.” Velma’s the one shivering now, with the memory of that final trip into the Crystal Cove caverns. “How did you know about them?”

“Funny thing.” Marcie’s mouth quirks. “Not funny ha-ha, just… funny. I used to have nightmares about a world where my mom left, and my dad ran a haunted amusement park.”

Velma’s mouth is dry. In all the time they’ve been in the new timeline, nobody else has said anything like this. “How long ago?”

“They stopped when you got interested in quantum theory,” Marcie says. “If that’s what you were wondering.” She looks past Velma. “There was a really bad one — I took a nap after school, and — it was the worst nightmare I’d had. Getting held hostage by a homicidal parrot, which is obviously ridiculous, but it felt so real, like it was really happening. And all I could think when I woke up was, what if I really died, and I hadn’t told Velma how I felt? So I called you and asked you out.”

“I’m sorry,” Velma says. 

“They weren’t always nightmares, V.” Marcie meets Velma’s eyes and Velma wonders what she remembers. The time Marcie talked her into a scoop-neck dress and rained kisses all up and down the tender skin of her neck?

“I’m sorry I’m not your Velma,” Velma says. “I — I know I won’t be her. I know there’s stuff I don’t know, don’t remember. But I do love you, Marcie.”

Marcie gets up, the blanket falling off her shoulders, and pulls Velma to her feet.

“You’re always my Velma.” Marcie takes Velma’s glasses off, her fingers gentle, and sets them aside on a battered chair. “You’re not old-timeline-Velma or new-timeline-Velma, you’re just Velma. You’re always brave, and curious, and smart.” She lets her hand fall to Velma’s waist. “And I’m always in love with you.”

Velma swallows. She’s not going to cry. “I’m always in love with you, too,” she says, and pulls Marcie in, her hand on Marcie’s face, her lips seeking Marcie’s lips.

* * *

They wake the next morning with the first light, curled into one another on the narrow mattress. Velma’s nose is cold, but her body is warm against Marcie’s.

They look at one another. Neither of them have their glasses on, but they’re close enough not to care.

“Morning.” Velma stretches, and then draws her arms back under the covers quickly. It’s cold in the cabin. The fire must have died in the night.

Marcie smiles, slow and brilliant. She leans forward and kisses Velma, her lips warm in the cold air of the room.

“Morning,” she says, when they pull apart. “I’d love to stay, but Mo’s going to be worried.”

“Of course.” Velma kisses Marcie one more time, and then jumps out from under the covers. It’s even colder with her whole body exposed, and she finds her clothes where they’re drying by the stove and pulls them on quickly. “Stay there,” she says, and then finds Marcie’s clothing. Her skirt and tights and sweater are mostly dry, although they still don’t have proper coats.

The snow has stopped falling, although the wind’s still blowing snow against the cabin. Velma’s cell phone still isn’t getting reception, so they use a hand mirror from Marcie’s pack to flash an SOS down to the town. The local rescue team arrives an hour later, pulling up on snowmobiles.

“You girls were lucky,” the officer tells them. “The cell tower came down yesterday in the storm. You were smart to find shelter.” 

Velma bumps Marcie’s shoulder with her own, and they follow the officers to the snowmobiles to ride back down to town.

* * *

When they get back to town, Mo’s waiting for them, with breakfast and hugs and scolding. “You scared us to death,” she says. “The searchers found the cave-in, and we thought —” She breaks off.

“I know, Aunt Mo.” Marcie hugs her aunt again. “I’m sorry. We tried to call, but we’re safe, and we’re fine now.”

“And we’re not going back in the passage we found,” Velma says. She’s already working out the best way to block off access to the basement.

Mo serves them hot coffee and breakfast pie. Velma chooses a big slice of raspberry pie. It’s not what she usually has for breakfast, but the flaky crust and tart raspberries are delicious. She suspects it’d taste this good even if she hadn’t been trapped in a snowstorm.

“Where did the other passage go?” Marcie asks. She’s got a slice of a new pie Mo had Anne help her bake — honey-butter custard.

“We’re the only end that doesn’t end in a cave-in.” Mo shivers. “I’m so glad you girls are back, and you’re never to do anything like that again, understand?”

Marcie meets Velma’s eyes, and Velma quirks one end of her mouth up. They probably will do something like this again. Maybe not an underground tunnel — Velma’s had enough of those for a lifetime. But curiosity is going to take them to wonderful places, and sometimes wonder and danger go hand in hand.

“We’ll be safe,” Velma says, instead of promising anything impossible. “But we still need to catch your pirate ghost.”

“Forget the ghost.” Mo shakes her head. “Forget the gold. I just needed you girls back.”

“You can have the ghost and us!” Velma finishes off the last of her pie and gets up. “While we were riding back, I was thinking. And I think I have a plan.”

* * *

The Mystery Incorporated team didn’t realize how much prep work Fred did until they arrived in the new timeline. Drilling hidden anchors into cement and brick walls, reinforcing support structures, trapping all their homes — if there was a reason for Mystery Incorporated’s high trapping success rate, it was all the prep work Fred did.

The new Crystal Cove has none of the hidden anchors and supports. It's been an adjustment for Fred, not having his usual prep work available. He’s had to develop a less structured, more free-form trapping trapping style. But he’s risen to the challenge. He’s even presenting a paper on it at TrapCon. 

Daphne, Velma, Scooby, and Shaggy have been listening to his rough drafts for weeks. While the detailed explanations of the Panamanian half-hitch, Zerwickie’s False Baffle, and Cartwright’s Counterweight (as adapted for Dumpster) didn’t make it into his final presentation, they are coming in handy for Velma today.

She and Marcie crouch behind a row of shrubbery, waiting for the Pirate of Silver Pines. Mo has baited the trap for them, and now they just need to wait. And wait. And wait.

“You think the Pirate heard our bait?” Marcie whispers, and Velma feels a warm glow inside. It’s wonderful to work with Marcie again, for real, no secrets between them.

“I guess we’ll find out.” 

Velma takes Marcie’s hand. They’re hidden in a shadow, but Velma can see the outline of Marcie’s fingers against her skirt. She traces each of Marcie’s fingers with her own, lingering at the sensitive fingertips and then stroking back to Marcie’s palm, stroking a gentle finger along the lines.

Marcie shivers. “I changed my mind,” she whispers. “The Pirate can take all the time he wants.”

Velma’s fingers are moving up Marcie’s arm when they hear a rattling in the alleyway. Their warning cans. They exchange a look, and then go to battle stations.

Marcie’s the lookout. When she confirms that the person entering the alleyway is wearing a tricorn pirate’s hat, she nods to Velma, who takes the peg out to arm the trap. After that, it’s just a matter of ropes, counterweights, and the force of gravity.

They step into the alleyway together. The Pirate of Silver Pines is flesh and blood, suspended inside a rope net.

“We got them!” Marcie says into the walkie-talkie. Mo, Anne, and several Silver Pines policemen come into the alleyway from where they’ve been hiding inside the building. The alleyway’s lights flicker back on.

Velma grins at Marcie. This is the best bit. “You take off the mask,” she says to Marcie. “I insist.”

“You’re sure?” Marcie shrugs. “You got it, V.” 

She steps forward and stands with her hands behind her back. “Let’s see who the real Pirate of Silver Pines is!” She reaches through the ropes and pulls the tricorn hat and rubber mask off the person they’ve captured, to reveal —

“Miss Pennypacker!” The gathered crowed gasps her name in unison.

“Miss Pennypacker,” Velma repeats. “The mystery of the Silver Pines Pirate seemed unsolvable at first. But of course, no mystery is unsolvable. And when I saw the boot print in the tunnel, I noticed something: the size. 

“The boot print was small. The Pirate of Silver Pines was a woman, not a man. But who?” Velma raises a finger to point. “There was only one woman who’d tried to lead me away from the records of Sneaky Zeke’s claim — your town archivist, Ida Pennypacker.”

Marcie picks up the story. “As the archivist, she had access to the records, and the time to explore them. She spent years working on her plan to smuggle out Sneaky Zeke’s gold to her sister, who had retired to Arizona.”

Velma lets her shoulder bump up against Marcie’s. “We had Mo send your throwaway email account a message saying your pie had to be rebaked, and then tell Anne that she’d lost an entire rack of pies, and thrown them away in the City Hall Dumpster so they wouldn’t attract ants.”

“It’s a small town,” Marcie says. “News spreads.”

“We figured you wouldn’t come back to the pie shop. But if the bait was right next to your archives?” Velma taps her fingers on the trap. “We knew you couldn’t resist.”

Miss Pennypacker struggles against the ropes holding her, and then gives up. “Fine. I found the treasure, and I planned to keep it all for myself. And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for you meddling lovebirds.”

Velma smiles up at Marcie. They’ve caught a completely non-supernatural ghost, the Pi Day pies are all baked, and they’re finally together, for real.

* * *

The spring breeze blows in the open window of Mo’s pie shop, over the pies cooling on her windowsill. It’s a warm, sunny day, and Marcie, Velma, and the rest of the Mystery Incorporated gang are visiting.

The pie shop is full of delicious pie smells. Fred and Daphne are trying Mo’s new salted maple butter custard, and Velma’s just polished off a slice of raspberry. Marcie’s got a slice of passionfruit curd tart.

Shaggy and Scooby have tried everything, and have a pile of empty pie plates in front of them. 

“Like, this is the real treasure of Silver Pines,” Shaggy says.

Velma points to the framed recipe book on the wall. “It totally is,” she says.

After the snow melted, Marcie and Velma went back to Sneaky Zeke’s claim cabin. It took some searching, along with help from a metal detector Velma threw together from an AM radio and an old calculator, but they found the rest of the gold, hidden in a secret compartment built into the rafters.

They also found something else there: a bundle of papers and an old journal, wrapped in oil skin. When they opened the package, they found Sneaky Zeke’s Last Will and Testament, leaving his fortune in gold to the Town of Silver Pines, to build parks and libraries. They also found Sneaky Zeke’s book of pie recipes.

The treasure went to the town. The town lawyers traced the last of Zekeriah Rogers’ relatives, and confirmed that Shaggy and his dad were the last living descendants from that branch of the Rogers clan. Shaggy gifted the pie recipes to Mo’s pie shop.

“Like, as long as we can come and taste them,” he’d said. Velma had shaken her head, hoping Mo knew what she was getting herself into.

Mo did. She even issued a standing invitation to any of the Mystery Incorporated gang to stop by for pie.

Her pie shop has a new name: The Windowsill, after the windowsills Zeke stole pies from. She still bakes her classics, like the Grasshopper pie the town loves, but she also bakes from Zeke’s book. Because it turned out that while Zeke stole the occasional pie, it wasn’t because of his appetite — or not entirely. Zeke had decided to perfect the pie. His windowsill pie purchases were his way of keeping up with pie trends.

Mo slides a double-level pie in front of Shaggy and Scooby. It’s one of Zeke’s most complicated recipes: small apple-cranberry pies, baked into a filling of nuts and caramel, in a larger, outer pie shell. Shaggy cuts into it and sighs in contentment.

Velma’s feeling pretty content herself. She’s leaning back against Marcie, and Piewacket is sitting in her lap, purring loudly while Velma pets him.

Fred is trying to get Rum Tum Tugger to jump after a toy. Rum Tum Tugger is snoozing on the floor, ignoring him, and Daphne’s leaning into Fred and watching him, laughter in her eyes.

When Velma’s cell phone buzzes, she pulls it out and studies the text alert before showing it to Marcie. “What do you think?”

Marcie kisses Velma, and then pulls back to study the text alert. “I’d say it looks like we have a case,” she says.

Velma puts Piewacket back on the bench seat and stands up. “The Mystery Incorporated website just got a request for us to look into a haunted food truck over in Silvertopolis. It’s not far — we can unmask the Secret of the Silvertopolis Spirit and be back for dinner pie. What do you guys think?”

“I think I want more pie,” Shaggy says.

Scooby looks up from his latest dish. “But if there’s a mystery, Raggy?”

“Then, like, let’s solve this mystery, get some delicious food truck food, and then get back to the pie!”

Fred and Daphne are already getting up. “Delicious pie, Mrs. Fleach,” Daphne says. “It’s my favorite of the new recipes!”

“You kids get out of here,” Mo says, smiling fondly. “I know when you’re needed elsewhere!”

“And it’ll give her time to restock the pie case,” Marcie whispers into Velma’s ear.

Velma grins back at her, and then starts heading to the door. “Come on, gang! It looks like we’ve got a mystery to solve.”


End file.
